33/30
Between March 16 and May 5, 2023
Synopsis
When visionary architect László Toth and his wife Erzsébet flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern America, a mysterious and wealthy client changes their lives forever. Filming took place over a total of 34 days. It was filmed in Budapest, Hungary and Carrara, Italy. Close-up: Why Do We Need the Venice Film Festival?
post-World War II horror
(2024). Brutalist is full of surprises. The characters are not what you expect – not in a Scooby Doo-style way, but in more subtle and gradual ways that real people reveal themselves – they unfold over time, in a new context, or forced by circumstances. Adrien Brody’s Laszlo, a Jewish architect escaping the clutches of a bloody Europe, steps into—or faces—the welcoming arms of America in a frenetic opening sequence that literally evokes the birth of the Statue of Liberty.
What’s the lesson?
He becomes a constant voyage of navigation through the horrors of life: existential, professional, familial, intimate—without taking his eyes off the prize of great achievement and never judging the value of the prize at first. Is it the shameful realization that his success came not despite his trauma but because of it? Are we indebted to a wrongdoing? To culture, land, power, and the forces that wield it in constructing our brutal legacies (and homelands)?
But there is no novel
Is our life more meaningful than the gasoline we burn on the way to somewhere? The film is charming, looks cool, and doesn’t bore (did you hear it was long?). It seems to be based on an old novel—a mystery I’d love to learn some of the details about which the film refuses to share. This aging man’s search for meaning becomes ours, too.